A wide-eyed child in Maine must have looked up on Thursday morning two weeks ago to see a childhood fantasy: a floating vessel being towed out over the Atlantic Ocean by 370 colorful, helium filled balloons.

If you’ve ever seen the Pixar movie “Up”, it’s a strikingly similar tale to the one that almost became a world record a few days ago.

On Thursday, September 12, the intrepid Jonathan Trappe, an IT manager in Raleigh, North Carolina, left U.S. soil for that of French, trying to become the first man to cross the Atlantic using the sole power of helium filled balloons.  He unfortunately had to abort the mission, due to technical difficulties, crash landing in the woods of Newfoundland.

Five people have died trying to do the same thing; an obvious fact always looming over Jonathan’s shoulder. But what fuels the necessity to undertake such feat, especially when the consequences so prevalent?

You may ask the same question to Nik Wallenda, the man who recently crossed the Grand Canyon with nothing but the tightrope beneath him and the pole that balanced him. Even though successfully making the Guinness Book of World Records, he very well knew that previous family members of his perished doing what he’s doing now. Or what about Austrian Felix Baumgartner’s jump from the edge of outer space? That’s right; the Red Bull sponsored stunt that reaped publicity for the energy drink company all over the world.

What do these people have living inside them that makes them different than the people who can’t look down on the ferris wheel? There always seems to be a surplus of people trying to get their names in the books, doing crazy exploits to accomplish it. They come across as being the ‘masters of risk taking’, and to some even just plain ‘loony’.

But wait; let’s take a step back from the cliché view of these people and their daredevilish stereotypes. They’re taking risks, certainly; but what is wrong with a risk?

Risks are practically the definition of progress. They define the great heroes in history, help leaders break thorough the mold, and forge countless new ideas and concepts. Some are more superior to others, but all have an impact on the person taking them.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of the noun ‘risk’ is the possibility that something bad or unpleasant (such as an injury or a loss) will happen. This statement undeniably has a negative connotation; what it is saying is true, but that is because it doesn’t acknowledge the positive outcomes of risks.

What if President John Kennedy never announced his plans to place a man on the moon in the early 60’s? Would we be looking up at that glowing spectacle in the night sky in a different light? Would Major League Baseball have been racially integrated fifty years ago if Branch Rickey never decided to draft Jackie Robinson to the LA Dodgers for a shot at bringing the first Black Baseball player into the American pastime? If The Allies never made the plans to land at Normandy Beach, would the Second World War have been extended, or even worse, lost? Obviously the list is virtually endless.

However, that list incorporates us, too. I’m talking about the people who never make the headlines or history books: the everyday person. We make choices that could end in a myriad of different ways. They sometimes amount to nothing, but they all have outcomes. You could say that we, the majority, have nothing in common with figures such as Rosa Parks or Alexander the Great, or Galileo or Thomas Edison, but those people woke up one day just as we did and sought to take a chance in life. It’s crucial that we take them. The world would be at a cataclysmic standstill if chances weren’t taken towards a positive outcome.

So that child in Maine might wake up tomorrow ready to take a risk in life that he’s never taken before. I would probably put money on it being trivial; but maybe, just maybe, we’ll read about him in the future, landing on French soil with the aid of 370 helium balloons.